UK Music Festivals 2015

The United Kingdom has a reputation for producing brilliant music. Whether their sparking off shouty punk, sarcastic Britpop, or intelligent, guitar-driven indie, their music has often caught on and set off around the world. But one thing that remains entirely British? UK music festivals, of course. From Glastonbury to Bestival to Secret Garden Party, Britain is probably one of the best-catered countries for live music lovers. Live, raw music has so often been such a big part of the British music scene that it’s with great pleasure festivals bring audiences a clash of old and new, big and small, classic and innovative. Renowned across the world for the sheer variety of live music they serve up-everything from electro-swing to rap to pop- it’s no wonder tourists across the world turn out to Britain when summertime comes. Luckily, it’s not for the weather. Currently, there are more than 670 live music events taking place across Britain throughout the year. Despite the recession, a passionate love for music and disregard for gallons of mud have driven fans to festivals in their thousands- the Leeds and Reading festival boasted a turnout of over two million. While many of these festivals only crop up for a few years at a time, there are several mainstays in British festival culture than have been around for decades- in some cases, over half of a century. The aforementioned Reading and Leeds festival kicked off in 1961, offering tickets for the equivalent of $4 to see bands like Sham 69 and The Jam. This was followed by the Isle of Wight festival in 1968, and then the emergence of the now-legendary Glastonbury in 1970. In the years that followed, score of new festivals emerged, swamping the country with weekends of live music and hundreds of new bands. Musicians still come from the world over to appear at UK music festivals-Calvin Harris, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fall Out Boy, and Wiz Khalifa are only a handful of huge acts that turned out to headline weekends this years. In the last few years, several particularly popular new festivals have emerged from the free-for-all festivals of the 1990s. The Secret Garden Party, an independent arts and music festival launched in 2004 as an alternative to generic, mainstream festivals, offers a great range of music, and the BoomTown fair builds a whole village dedicated to bringing audiences a crazy range of music and boho activities.